Originally Posted by Arutad
Originally Posted by The Cusp
Everything requires your attention to exist.
That's untrue.
Consider all those cases when you were doing something, and then suddenly a dream character would walk up to you whom you haven't seen anywhere in the vicinity previously. Where did he come from? He certainly didn't require your attention to become existent, he simply appeared and started to act without your invitation.
If it wasn't true, then that would imply that the dream world is a stable world just like RL. That is clearly untrue.
Those dream characters that appear from nowhere do not have a previous history or existence, except for recurring characters.
Where did they come from? They were spawned from personal archetypes or schemata. They did not exist before you layed eyes on them or otherwise conceived of them in some dark corner of your mind.
Originally Posted by Arutad
Therefore it's not true that everything in a dream requires your attention to exist. Many elements of a dream are enacted subconsciously, and whatever made them existent and whatever makes them act in certain ways is out of control and doesn't operate through your attention.
The initial posts I made in this thread were far from complete, so perhaps I wasn't very clear initially. Your attention is merely the trigger or catalyst. What it triggers are archetypes, so focusing on the ocean for instance could yield anything form sea monsters to tidal waves, anything you associate with the ocean.
There is a lot of randomness involved in which direction those archetypes might go, but emotions do limit the range of possibilities.
Originally Posted by Arutad
If you had a different belief, things would be different. Take a person in this thread who made a tsunami disappear by ignoring it, it's obvious that it worked this way because he expected it to work this way. In other words, it's normal dream control, you achieve what you expect to achieve.
Saying what you expect to happen actually happens is the single biggest misconception about LDing there is. Even the most experienced LDers experience countless failures while attempting things. If they didn't expect those things to work, they never would have tried it in the first place.
It's not expectations that limit people, it's archetypes. I'm reminded of one of TwoShadows' LDs, where she repeatedly tried to pass through a solid wall but kept smashing into it (that image cracks me up!). It wasn't her expectations that failed her, she tried like hell. It was the well developed archetype that solid objects are just that, solid.
In order to override that particular hurdle, one would need to supercede that archetype of solid matter with one of something less substantial like mist, or something equally relevant to that individual. A physicist might use the space between particles, while someone into astral projection might use the insubstantial astral body.
Saying control relies on expectations is close, yet innacurate.
Originally Posted by Arutad
So for testing purposes I stared at my hand during a LD. I stared at it and stared, and it proceeded to look the same. I stared more and more, then considerably more, and finally my little finger changed its color slightly.
What did you expect to happen? You succeded in producing a change in the color of your finger. Hands are a fairly stable archetype. Had you been prone to warts in RL, you might have seen warts. But we experience very few variations in the appearance of our hands throughout our lifetimes. Perhaps if you had focused on the discoloration in your finger and then checked the rest of your body, you might have seen discolorations on the rest of your body as well.
The very first time I looked at my hands in a dream (and only time) I saw various things flashing in and out of existance in the palms of my hands like flipping through the pages of a book, like when you make animations in the corners and flip the pages. There was money, keys, sticks of gum, food, everything and anything I might possibly hold in my hands. That's what an archetype is, the sum total of associations with a certain subject or idea.
I appreciate your attempt at trying this out, but that one example is like saying just because you saw one car on fire, that all cars catch on fire.
I've experimented with this thouroghly in several lucids, as well poured over other people's DJs. Next time instead of your hands, try looking at some squirming insects, even better if they are stinging insects, and see how fast they multiply. The classic tooth dream is a great example if a rather extreme one.
Originally Posted by Arutad
In fact, this method proves that it works in an opposite way: it made my hand look like the normal hand for a considerably longer time that it would if I didn't stare at it uninterruptedly! My last statement can easily be checked by looking away from something in a dream for a while and then looking back at it, in this case the object you looked at will show new details or will otherwise be changed. Interruption does introduce new details, but uninterrupted staring impedes this process.
There, you've said it yourself, you didn't allow for any dramatic change to occur. You were limited to the first rule that everything requires your attention to exist, thereby maintaining a solid image of your hands. I don't think we disagree on how those changes take place. THat's one aspect I never got into much, mainly due to the lack of discussion that took place in this thread. I thank you for speaking up, and also welcome anything else you might have to say on the subject.
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